Emerald City ComiCon, held at Seattle's Washington State Convention Center April 4 and 5, is rapidly becoming one of the staples of the comics convention circuit. Now in its seventh year, ECCC (as Twitter hashtags called it) is taking shape as a smaller-scale, lower-pressure version of New York or San Diego's conventions. Although attendance figures weren't yet available at press time, the consensus was that attendance was up from last year—2008 attendance was about 8,000—maybe way up, especially on Saturday, when there were long lines to get into the convention center.
ECCC isn't strictly a comics show: there were gaming tournaments, clothing vendors, a Suicide Girls booth, webcomics collective TopatoCo selling prints and media guests. Many attendees came to see, say, Star Trek actor Wil Wheaton (who had his own panel on Sunday) and might've picked up a graphic novel or two while they were at it. But the front few aisles of the show floor were heavy on comics publishers, including Seattle's own Fantagraphics, at whose booth Jaime Hernandez (Love & Rockets) was holding court for most of the weekend and his brother and L&R co-creator Gilbert Hernandez’s Luba hardcover made its public debut. DC's booth featured piles of Transmetropolitan and Swamp Thing giveaways, as well as Wonder Woman tiaras. At the Oni Press booth, Ted Naifeh was signing the new Courtney Crumrin book. Cartoonists Matt Kindt (Super Spy), Nate Powell and the prolific James Kochalka (Johnny Boo) signed at Top Shelf. (Powell, whose graphic novel Swallow Me Whole sold out on Saturday, drove back to Portland—a six-hour round trip—to retrieve more boxes of it for Sunday's crowds.)
There were only a handful of announcements made at this year's ECCC—most notably the relaunch of Boom!'s 28 Days Later title and Jeff Jensen and Ramón K. Pérez's forthcoming Dark Horse graphic novel Green River Killer: A Detective Story—and only two panel rooms. (It didn't help that panel information wasn't actually printed in the program guide.) But it seemed to be particularly successful for mid-size publishers. "I did better here Saturday than I did in New York in three days," Active Images' Richard Starkings reported.
Ian Brill of Boom! Studios agreed: "Saturday was like a really good Sunday at San Diego."
Emerald City is building a reputation as a creator-centered show, and the Artists' Alley area where artists (and writers) were signing and chatting with fans took up a good third of the floor. Comics stars Ed Brubaker, Brian Michael Bendis and Mike Mignola drew long lines of fans; writer Greg Rucka was talking up his forthcoming Detective Comics collaboration with J.H. Williams III; veterans like Tony DeZuniga and Alex Niño were selling original artwork; and Erika Moen took a long list of pre-orders for her forthcoming collection of her webcomic DAR: A Super Girly Top Secret Comic Diary.
A few of the con's most charming aspects are its own innovations, too. On Sunday afternoon, there was a performance by convention organizer Jim Demonakos's comics-themed rock band Kirby Krackle. And Monsters & Dames, a nicely produced hardcover art book featuring work by many of the show's guests, sold hundreds of copies to raise money for the Seattle Children's Hospital.
